London’s Underworld Unearthed: The Secret Life of the Rookery

Following her recent national recognition as Landscape Winner in the Visual Artists Association, Artist of the Year Awards 2025 for her painting The Dungenesser, London artist, curator, and historian Jane Palm-Gold announces a major exhibition and an illustrated historical talk as part of the Bloomsbury Festival 2025. London’s Underworld Unearthed: The Secret Life of the Rookery opened on the 16 October and runs until 18 December 2025 at Camden Archives & Local Studies Centre, London.

This immersive exhibition combines art, archaeology, and historical storytelling to uncover the lost world of St Giles — once home to London’s most infamous slum and the setting for William Hogarth’s Gin Lane (1751). Artist Jane Palm-Gold draws striking parallels between the social unrest of the 18th century and the urban challenges of today, creating a layered psychogeography that is both captivating and unsettling.

Building on Palm-Gold’s acclaimed 2011 exhibition, London’s Underworld Unearthed revisits Hogarth’s squalid and riotous St Giles — a pit of poverty, vice, and degradation that shocked Georgian society. Yet Palm-Gold finds uncanny echoes between that historic parish and the modern West End, which is still shadowed by addiction and antisocial behaviour.

Featuring artefacts from Jane Palm-Gold’s personal collection presented alongside six years of research and paintings, the exhibition offers a vivid portrait of life in the old Rookery. Through her works, Palm-Gold juxtaposes the 18th-century gin craze with today’s drug epidemic, weaving a complex and evocative exploration of social decay, resilience, and renewal.

London’s Underworld Unearthed: The Secret Life of the Rookery is a featured exhibition of the VAA’s Open Spaces 2025 Global Art Trail in Everyday Spaces programme, launched October 11^th 2025.

Admission - FREE

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